Why won't Washington address the long-term debt?

1/29/13 10:27 AM EST

F. Scott's Fitzgerald once famously said: "The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function." If the great American writer was correct, then there are very few first-rate minds working in Washington or occupying my Twitter feed.

Maybe Paul Krugman is right. Maybe the Nobel Prize winner's suggestion on "Morning Joe" that Washington politicians cannot walk and chew gum at the same time is dead right. Maybe Barack Obama and Republicans in Congress are incapable of addressing the United States' long-term debt while avoiding the kind of harsh austerity measures that have led to a triple-dip recession in Great Britain.

Erskine Bowles, former President Clinton's chief of staff, has spent the last three years of his life warning of a coming financial crash if Washington continues its reckless ways in dealing with Medicare and Medicaid. As Bowles explains to audiences across the country, his prognosis is not based on ideology. It is instead a simple matter of math. And make no mistake. That simple arithmetic will doom the economic future of liberals, conservatives and independents alike unless Washington starts planning for the future now.

Is that asking too much of a group that Mr. Krugman says can't walk and chew gum at the same time?